E3 2010: NBA Jam Does 60 FPS

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The Wii version of the game is getting even more arcade accurate.

By Craig Harris

The last time I played NBA Jam was at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco a few months back. At the time, the game looked pretty spot-on to an actual arcade experience, but with one glaring issue: it wasn't running at 60 frames per second, as every version of NBA Jam in the arcade had. Even NBA Showtime -- the 3D successor -- ran at 60 FPS.

Oh, don't get me wrong, Jam at 30 frames per second still plays well and EA's interpretation of NBA Jam is so spot on that it definitely feels like members of the original Jam team built it on Wii.

But during that demo, I made specific mention to the development team that it really felt like it needed to run at double the rate to really nail that Jam sensation.

Well, the E3 demo confirms it: the team nailed the Jam sensation by getting the game to run at 60 frames per second with pretty much no discernable drop in visual quality. It's fast paced and silky smooth, and the game just looks wicked cool in an old-school but current gen sort of way.

The game I played even had the Toronto Raptors mascot playable: even though the head was the 2D photo style, the 3D body form had folds of fabric along the legs and arms. Pretty cool.

I'm looking forward to seeing more on NBA Jam leading up to its October release. Next up: get online play in there.